Publicis, Vibrant Spearhead Campaign For Charter Schools

Vibrant Media has donated 3,000 words, or clicks, to help Publicis Modem support an online campaign for the nonprofit National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The "It's A Fact" campaign consists of public service announcements for online, transit, radio, television and print.

About 30 companies have donated resources to run the campaign from keywords to banner inventory to physical space. Each media outlet agreeing to run the PSAs and ads also donated commercial time. The campaign, which began earlier this month, runs through June.

Vibrant supports about half the sites across the Web with hover ads, and can assist the agency guarantee more than 40 million impressions during the three months the campaign will run, according to Christine Peterson, group media director at Publicis Modem. When possible, the ads will target parents of school-age children, as well as those in government or local government agencies that make decisions. Targeting is based on available information in certain portals.

Peterson suggests more portals and news sites should consider running nonprofit PSAs in the event paid media gets delayed or they just can't fill the space. "Some publishers just run house ads because they can't sell the inventory," she says. "Running a PSA is a tax benefit. Companies can make a difference by donating to the cause without a major impact to their bottom line."

More than 1.6 million students attend charter schools, but few people actually know what charter schools are or how they work, according to Sarah Johnson, director of media and agency relations at NAPCS. "About 70% of those polled don't know that charter schools never charge tuition, but are designed to boost achievement," she says.

This is the first campaign for the NAPCS. It tapped services from the CauseWay Agency, a full-service marketing agency aimed at helping nonprofits get the word out. So far, outlets have donated $1.4 million in revenue across all five mediums.

The NAPCS will measure the campaign's success in multiple ways. Vibrant's hover ads will allow the it to track location by coding the content. The organization also will analyze audience segment data, such as the number of possible ad views or impressions, as well how many outlets run the message.

And, for locations similar to New York's Times Square, where it's possible for approximately 6 million people to see an ad on the digital billboard, the projected numbers, based on the possibility of the number of people viewing the ads, will be factored in. A polling service will also track the message and how well the ads are understood.